Liam Fox outlines security challenges

Liam Fox outlines security challenges; - Let’s relate these lessons to our situation today.Speaking at Chatham House last week, Niall Ferguson said:“fiscal and monetary stimulus, no matter how much it may take and how many times you read aloud the collected works of John Maynard Keynes, sooner or later brings a hangover.”It has fallen to this Coalition Government to nurse Britain through the hangover of the decade of financial mismanagement that put us where we are today.When, as Chancellor, Gordon Brown abandoned sticking to the previous Conservative Government’s strict spending policies, Britain’s national debt began an inexorable rise.Despite the benign economic environment of most of the last decade, from 2002-2007 under Labour, UK national debt as a percentage of GDP increased not decreased - from around 31% to around 37%.On the back of the financial crisis it has ballooned to around 60% of GDP.The Coalition Government inherited from Labour a record peacetime annual deficit equal of over 11% of GDP - in 2009/10 alone that meant a spend of over £150bn more than the Government brought in in income. Until the structural deficit is eliminated, Britain’s national debt will only continue to grow.Even with the Coalition’s aggressive action, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts public sector net debt to peak at over 70% of GDP in 2014/15. It currently stands at over £900bn - equivalent to almost a quarter of a century of spending on Defence at the level of this year’s budget. By 2015 it is likely to reach well over 1.3 trillion pounds. The interest, just the interest, paid out last year alone was £43bn - greater than the annual budgets of the MoD, FCO and DfID combined. £43bn pounds a year of taxpayers’ money that could pay for a tax cut to each taxpayer of almost £1,500 a year.Or it could pay for a million teachers or over a million nurses.In Defence - a dozen Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carriers or 33 Ast...